autoresponder

a.k.a. answerbot -or- mailbot

Best thought of as an automatic e-mail response, it is a bot that has become an essential Internet tool for netcentric businesses. An autoresponder sends "canned" e-mail messages instantly to people who request information. It can be as simple as sending one message to anyone who writes to a specific e-mail address, or it can be as sophisticated as offering fifty different response messages, each one sent based on the text of the received e-mail message.